" half a year's residence in her family afforded": The Six-Month Massacre of Steventon

In Austen L & Janeites, Anielka Briggs wrote: "All film versions of Sense and Sensibility lead one to believe that Fanny Dashwood and her irritating demeanour ejected the first Mrs. Dashwood from Norland very swiftly. And yet the text is very clear that the second Mrs. Dashwood lived in her son-in-law's home for at least six months..... "Mrs. Dashwood began shortly to give over every hope of the kind, and to be convinced, from the general drift of his discourse, that his assistance extended no farther than their maintenance for six months at Norland. " It seems almost reasonable that after six months Fanny Dashwood should begin to grow anxious to dispense of the other Mrs. Dashwood....... "

I responded as follows:

Let's see......Le Faye's Chronology entry on p. 249 reads as follows:

"late November-early December [1800]: Steventon: Revd and Mrs GA suddenly decide to leave the rectory and retire to Bath; when JA and Martha arrive from Ibthorpe Mrs. GA greets them with the decision; JA is said to have been much upset by it...."

This dating by Le Faye seems pretty solid, because Letter 28 posted December 1, 1800 contains not a hint of any proposed move from Steventon, and yet, by Letter 29, dated January 5, 1801, it is clear that the move to Bath has been in the works for a pretty long while.

OK......so then we have Letters 29 through 36 (spanning the time period from January 5, 1801 through May 13, 1801) which all provide ample evidence of what I have previously referred to as "the Massacre of Steventon", during which James and Mary Austen do their very best imitations of John and Fanny Dashwood:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/03/dear-morland-poor-little-harry-jas.html

And we know from Letter 35 that Jane Austen left Steventon for Bath during the first week of May, 1801, which means that the time span from the moment JA first learns of the move to Bath, until she finds herself living in Bath, is between just over _five_ months.

Hmm......Yes, Anielka, surely by May, 1801, after an eternity lasting nearly six months (it would be very much the exaggerating mindset of a grasping, greedy usurper to refer to a time period of five months and four days as "nearly six months") that would try anyone's patience, Mary Austen was indeed quite anxious to have her tiresome in-laws gone from Steventon already. After all, who knew what sort of horrid, malicious rumors these overstaying-their-welcome ingrate in-laws might spread about Mary's attempts to feather her new nest properly, if they continued to be so inconveniently impolite as to remain physically present in Steventon to bear accurate witness to the details of the Massacre, such as the following passage in Letter 36 dated May 13, 1801:

"....James I dare say has been over to Ibthrop by this time to enquire particularly after Mrs. Lloyd's health, & forestall whatever intelligence of the sale I might attempt to give.-Sixty-one guineas & a half for the three cows gives one some support under the blow of only Eleven Guineas for the Tables. Eight for my Pianoforte, is about what I really expected to get; I am more anxious to know the amount of my books, especially as they are said to have sold well."


So you say, "almost reasonable"? I think JA's Letters 29-36, as well as Chapter 2 of S&S, tell us pretty clearly what JA thought and felt about the Massacre of Steventon---a massacre based firmly on the following principle enunciated by JA in Letter 37 dated May 22, 1801:

"The whole World is in a conspiracy to enrich one part of our family at the expence of another.”

And it is quite interesting to read the characterization of all of the above that was written 70 years later by the real-life model for Fanny Dashwood's "poor little Harry":

"The loss of their first home is generally a great grief to young persons of strong feeling and lively imagination; and Jane was exceedingly unhappy when she was told that her father, now seventy years of age, had determined to resign his duties to his eldest son, who was to be his successor in the Rectory of Steventon, and to remove with his wife and daughters to Bath. Jane had been absent from home when this resolution was taken; and, as her father was always rapid both in forming his resolutions and in acting on them, she had little time to reconcile herself to the change."

Tell me, was Jane Austen prescient or not, when she put the following words in Fanny and John Dashwood's mouths in Chapter 2 of S&S:

"....why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, by giving away all his money to his half sisters?....Consider...that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could be restored to our poor little boy—"

"Why, to be sure," said her husband, very gravely, "that would make great difference. THE TIME MAY COME when Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would be a very convenient addition."


That time _did_ come for the elderly James Edward Austen Leigh when he wrote the above passage in the Memoir, and tried to whitewash over JA's obvious bitter resentment against James & Mary (i.e., against his own parents!) by reframing JA's unhappiness as a response to her father's overhasty decision making predilections, and utterly omitting any reference to James or Mary in that regard!

And I finish by repeating for the umpteenth time that just because there were women like Mary Austen who were clever enough to find ways to unofficially twist the knobs of power, does not negate the sexist status quo that put the eldest son of the Austen family, James, in a position of absolute power vis a vis his sisters in the first place. Fanny Dashwood, Mrs. Ferrars, Mrs. Churchill, Lucy Steele, Charlotte Lucas, and Mrs. Clay, to name the most obvious examples from JA's fiction, represent one species of distortion in _female_ personality that was triggered by the mostly gender-based institutional inequalities of JA's world, just as, e.g., the Wickhams, WIlloughbys, Crawfords, et al represent another such distortion on the male side.

JA was a master psychologist, and recognized that "the system" was at the root of so much amoral or reckless behavior of all kinds in her society, on the part of both males and females. Had there been true gender equality in the society, JA is suggesting, there would have been much more truly Christian behavior by one part of the world toward the other.

Cheers, ARNIE
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